Goodies Announcement

The new Beyond HTML Goodies book
is now available!

Go beyond the basics
and learn how the pros add and use dynamic HTML features and advanced
JavaScript techniques. Beyond HTML Goodies demonstrates dozens of new and
different features readers can add to their existing Web pages using HTML and
JavaScript. The book starts with simple text and image tips, such as adding a
clock to a Web page or causing text to appear when the mouse moves over an
image. It gradually builds to more complex tricks, including manipulating forms
or working with cookies behind the scenes. Throughout the book, readers enjoy
Joe's snappy style and "to the point" discussion of each "goody" in the book.

Not wanting to make the scene too public, the most obvious
selection of the available choices was a restaurant. To set the scene: there was
the right wine; red -- of course. Not the cheap stuff - a bottle of Chateaux
Haut Guislaine. A candle on the table, flickering with the attentive movements
of the wait staff. And lying on the white linen tablecloth, a pair of velvet
petalled crimson roses. The background music is the sweet saxophone of the late,
great Grover Washington Jr.; and nothing, just nothing, needs improvement.

"I want you to know that right now, the world has faded into the distance. Right
now, there's only you and me; I don't care about anything else, anywhere. Right
now, I have a question for you. I want you to know that you are the only thing
that matters to me, and that I want it to stay that way for ever, and I want to
know if you will."

Somehow that seems incomplete, don't you think? Maybe even a little frustrating?

I have seen too many websites recently bearing an "under construction" notice
and it's starting to get to me. How much effort does it really take to come up
with one page that includes the basic who, what, when, where and why of any
particular topic? Not too much, I would venture to say. But it is, apparently,
too much for the authors of those sites.

Surfing the web frequently involves typing something into your search engine of
choice, hyper jumping off to one of the offered selections and thence to link,
to link, to link. Very frequently, the sites encountered on such a cruise are
sites visited only once -- unless there's something so spectacular about them
that they need to be added to the favorites list. Those sites say what they have
to say when visited. What they said before and what they will say later doesn't
really matter to the visitor. This is their one chance for communication.

This being the case, it is crucially important that as soon as a site comes into
existence, whereby it can be identified and cataloged by a spider, it must say
whatever it has to say. It is not important that the first cut be written with a
style worthy of the bard -- that's not what the visitor needs. What the visitor
needs is to be provided at least the basic information pertinent to the site's
purpose. A single page description will at least allow the visitor to feel that
their time was not entirely wasted.

I have every confidence that Goodies To Go readers are aware of this important
consideration, that they don't violate the rule and subject their visitors to an
awful "Under Construction" notice. It is possible, however, that they may lack
the confidence in their convictions to feel comfortable chastising their misled
peers for offenses they may commit. Please know that you are completely right in
correcting them. Please understand that you provide a service to the world (wide
web) when you correct the error of their ways. I for one will be eternally
grateful when I no longer have to spend my time reading those two undesirable
words (or their substitutes!)

And in the meantime, I hope you and your loved one (whether current, future, or
secret) have a wonderful Valentines day!

Q. I have a webpage that has a navigation bar on the left, and want that
navigation bar to always be visible no matter how far a user scrolls down the
page. Do I need a frame, or do I need JavaScript?

A. Take a look at this site:
http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex1/index.html
They have many navigation menus you can use. Just keep in mind that not all of
the menus will work with all of the browsers. Choose one that says it will work
with all of them unless you have a captured audience and know that they all use
a particular browser.

Q. Do you know of any commands that will not display the password as you
type it, or put in a series of asterisks, while still keeping the data so that
it can be compared to the values in a database?

Q. I have some experience with HTML and JavaScript, but I recently
visited a site that had a bunch of applet windows that popped up and
disappeared. I would love to know how to get that.

A. What you were looking at was actually a Java Applet. This is very
different from JavaScript - they are barely even related (except that they can
both be used on the web). A Java Applet is like a program and JavaScript is what
it's name implies, a scripting language. The only way to get something like that
is to see if the developer at that site would be willing to share it with you.

Q. I would like to make a word a clickable link to to another word......
such as 1st Th 5:17 clickable to the scripture.

A. You can set an anchor that will bring up a certain part of the page
where the word is.
< A name="1st_th517"> is placed by the word.
<a href="#1st_th517">Th 5:17</a> is placed as the link

Q. I've been using the <BASE FONT=3> command within the head tags
thinking that would "fix" the page fonts at a certain size, but it doesn't. Is
there any way to "fix" font size to the way I need it for my designs to work?

A. I don't use it but it does have to be used correctly. This element can
be used only within the BODY element or the HEAD element. BASEFONT should appear
before any displayed text in the body of the document. It can be overridden
using the FONT tag within the document. Maybe this is what is happening:
No BASEFONT size specified yet.
<BASEFONT SIZE=4> Set the BASEFONT size.
<FONT SIZE=2> Temporarily override the BASEFONT size.</FONT>
Resume the BASEFONT size. End of example.
Did you try using a Cascading Style Sheet? You can manipulate the style of the
font using it.
<HEAD>
<TITLE>CSS Example</TITLE>
<STYLE TYPE="text/css">
H1 { font-size: x-large; color: red }
H2 { font-size: large; color: blue }
</STYLE>
</HEAD>
The above style sheet tells the browser to show level-one headings in an
extra-large, red font, and to show level-two headings in a large, blue font.

Stripped-Down MyDoom Hits Microsoft.... Again[February 9, 2004] A new variant of the virulent MyDoom worm
has been found in the wild, launching what one analyst fears may
be a vicious attack against Microsoft Corp.'s Web site.

HP Leaves Door Open For Opteron
[February 9, 2004] The company reaffirms its faith in Itanium with new
server announcements, but still leaves room for a new PA-RISC processor and
possibly AMD's 64-bit chip.

AOL Floats E-Mail Reports for Marketers[February 9, 2004] The giant ISP is gauging marketers' interest in a
tracking service that would let marketers know whether and why e-mail was
blocked, among other things.

Could National Security Concerns Slow VoIP?
[February 6, 2004] FEATURE The FBI's concern about wiretap capability of
Internet telephony is complicating the FCC's desire to limit regulation of
the technology.

Every week a site is selected for review. Each week,
reviews of the previous week's selected site are chosen for
publication on the HTML Goodies website.

The current week's selected site is published in Goodies To
Go and in the Peer Reviews section of the website.
Current contact email addresses for submitting your site and
for submitting reviews are published in Goodies To Go.

If you would like to have your site reviewed, sign up for
the Goodies To Go newsletter in the Navigation Bar on the
left side of this page.

Did you ever wish your newsletter was an easy two way communications medium?
Ploof! It now is!
If you would like to comment on the newsletter or expand/improve on something
you have seen in here, you can now send your input to:

We already receive a lot of email every day. This address will help us sort out
those relating specifically to this newsletter from all the rest. When you send
email to this address it may wind up being included in this section of the
newsletter, to be shared with your fellow readers.
Please don't send your questions to this address.
They should be sent to our mentors: see
http://www.htmlgoodies.com/mentors/

For those who are missing Peer reviews: we are once again
revising the Peer review program in the hopes of creating a
workable solution. The current plan is to move the new Peer
Review pages into place in the new year. All those who have
been selected for reviews in the past will be featured in
the new pages. The new method will make it much easier for
your peers to provide feedback and much easier for us to
handle the publication side of things. "Watch this space!"
It's coming soon!!

Bill Gates, in a recent interview, predicted the end of spam by
2006. One of the methods he mentioned involved a challenge only
a real live person could handle. This article shows how to use
.NET to create a Web form user-verification scheme that
incorporates similar concepts Gates alluded to.

Since writing my article on using Index Server from ASP, I've
gotten quite a few questions about why people aren't getting the
results they expect. There are a number of reasons why this
might happen, but one of the most common is that your query
includes "noise words". This article will explain what noise
words are and show you how to edit the list of words that index
server treats as noise words.

Tong Lee, a Chinese gang member, had been convicted of murdering a
rival gang member and on this day in 1924 was executed in Carson
City, Nevada, by lethal gas. The state of Nevada adopted lethal gas
in 1921 as a more humane method than hanging or electrocution. A
person to be executed by lethal gas is sealed in an airtight
chamber. Potassium or sodium cyanide is then dropped into
hydrochloric acid to yield hydro-cyanic gas. Within seconds of
breathing in the gas, the prisoner falls unconscious and then chokes
to death. Later in the twentieth century, lethal gas was replaced by
lethal injection as a means of capital punishment.

Today was also the day that in: 1674 the English took back
New York from the Dutch; 1788 the Austrians declared war on
Russia; 1895 W.G. Morgan of Massachusetts invented
volleyball; 1900 Dwight Davis established the Davis Cup as a
tennis trophy; 1916 Britain starts conscription; 1926
teaching of the theory of evolution was forbidden in Atlanta,
Georgia schools; 1943 an epic battle ended as the Japanese
evacuated Guadalcanal; 1950 Senator Joseph McCarthy charge
that the Senate was "infested" with 205 communists; 1962
Jamaica became independent; 1963 first flight of Boeing 727;
1969 first commercial flight of Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet; 1971
Apollo 14 returned to Earth; 1975 Soyuz 17 returned to Earth;
1978 Ted Bundy killed Kimberly Leach at Lake City, Florida;
1985 Madonna's "Like A Virgin" reached #1 (remained there for
three weeks); 1997 the Fox cartoon series "The Simpsons"
aired its 167th episode making it the longest running animated
series in the history of cartoons; 2002 Britain's Princess
Margaret, sister of Queen Elizabeth II, died of a stroke at 71;

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